Windows 7 dllhost.exe memory leak

Anonymous
2013-05-26T18:01:40+00:00

Help!  dllhost.exe grows like the blob till resources are gone and thumbnails turn to icons, file searching slowed

When I search for images on my drives, the thumbnails do not work after only a little while of searching.  Also, the thumbnails on the desktop, or when searching open folders in windows, for images do not show up correctly.  In the Resource Monitor > Memory tab, I can see dllhost.exe is growing like the blob.  If I end the dllhost.exe process tree, things return to normal and my icons return to thumbnails little while, as dllhost.exe spawns again, and grows.  I can squash it like I'm playing whack-a-program over and over and eventually see the thumbnails.

     I have searched and only found the most mundane answers that are no help.  I have no virus.  My son has the same problem in with his Quad core I7 system running Windows 7 pro.  System caches are cleaned out regularly, and the system performs flawlessly in every other way.  This is not about video thumbnails.  This is about picture thumbnails like .jpg and .png 

Also, if I open a drive in my computer, the green search bar is very slow going to the right on each drive

System specifications

Windows 7 Pro (64 bit)

32GB DDR 3

AMD 8150 fx 8 core

Asus Motherboard

2 separate SLC SSDs, and 4 spindle drives

Kaspersky Internet Security 2014

50Mb cable internet connection

Windows for home | Previous Windows versions | Windows update

Locked Question. This question was migrated from the Microsoft Support Community. You can vote on whether it's helpful, but you can't add comments or replies or follow the question.

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Anonymous
2013-06-04T15:30:12+00:00

I have resolved the issue and optimized my computer by leaps and bounds.  Albeit, many computer problems are caused by human error, corrupted files, virus activity, overloads of this and that.  This is a new installation of Windows 7, with the above mentioned specs and respectable internet security suite.  I use the MVPS hosts file, that I add the updates to, and I update it myself, if something nasty comes up and I keep a good eye on my cookies regularly.  

Here's what I did.   I ran Autoruns by Sysinternals and unchecked any references to Microsoft Office (Office still works fine, btw).  Since I don't use adobe acrobat to read PDFs, I unchecked the autoruns there also (I use foxit)  I believe there are many items in that list that I could have unchecked, but if I wasn't exactly sure what it was, I left it alone.  I only went by what I saw in the description and location.  I recommend this to anyone having problems of this nature and general slow down of their system.  Be careful, and try to understand what you're unchecking as a program that automatically starts in the background when Windows starts.  The whole process took less than 20 minutes of going through the list for me.

All of my thumbnails work perfect, videos, .jpg, .png, etc.

Note:

I do not believe that any updates to my computer caused this problem as I originally proposed, as I installed windows and completely shut off all MS updates, but yet the problem started right after one of my other software installations.

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Anonymous
2014-09-28T17:18:35+00:00

I recently bought a new computer with windows professional loaded.  No Microsoft office products on this PC.

I downloaded Adobe reader.  Then was asked to update adobe on 9/27/14.  After the update my cpu went bonkers with dllhost.exe running amuck.  I removed adobe and that fixed the problem.  The last update seemed to be the culprit.

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Anonymous
2015-03-09T01:50:01+00:00

THANK YOU OSCAR

This was the problem

I got rid of the MP4s that did not have thumbnails in my download folder and this fixed the problem!

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  1. Anonymous
    2015-03-29T08:12:27+00:00

    Hi Oscar,

    You are a hero ! I have been struggling with this problem since May 2011 ie when i purchased the laptop. Every 6 months I had to reload windows because windows explorer.exe used to hang ie the same magnifying glass issue that others have faced. Restart/reboot did not solve the issue and the only solution was to either put up with the problem or reload windows. the machine also used to get heated up quite fast. I accidentally came across your solution yesterday just before I was to do another reload of windows and thank god for that. I have been saved the trouble and the machine works like a charm now. The heat issue also seems to have gone and dllhost.exe does not even figure in my task manager now ! I hope someone in MS is reading this and trying to fix windows esp now that they are planning to give windows 10 away for free. cant imagine that i lived with this problem for the last 4 years ! I almost began to give up hope and my brother was winning the battle of convincing me to move to mac ! cant imagine that something simple like this becomes an issue with Windows.

    Thanks once again.

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  2. Anonymous
    2014-11-07T18:36:14+00:00

    OJ,

    I had the same exact problem and the dll was almost making my system unusable.   Give my above post a try and see if the thumbnails might be the problem.  With the exception of not seeing a pic on thumbnail, the system runs great and the dll quit running nonstop.  If i turn them back on, the dll returns in force.  If nothing else, giving it a try might help eliminate or narrow down the problem.

    Good luck!

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